India would have been talking about 15-trillion-dollar economy, if it’s led by KCR, says KTR

HYDERABAD: Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao has made a strong political pitch with just one sentence while signing off his address at a well-attended corporate meet in Hyderabad. “If only India has a leader like Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the goal of a five-trillion-dollar economy would have been a joke and the bar would have been raised to 15 trillion dollars,” says KTR.

While speaking at inauguration ceremony of NHRD Decode The Future - National Conference at HICC, he has said that leadership in India is eternally politically oriented and he too wasn’t an exempt from that.

But the country’s political leadership must set constant politicking aside and focus on economics (rather than politics). “We are unfortunately always on an election mode,” he quipped sounding a sense of disappointment about the state of the country’s polity.

It didn’t matter whether there was a Prime Minister in the country or a Chief Minister in a State, the people would make it a five-trillion-dollar economy anyway.

If only India replicated the Telangana model, it would have already achieved a 4.25-trillion-dollar economy. The five-trillion-dollar goal would achievable by India’s human capital of which 50 percent was of less than 35 years of age and 65 percent was of less than 28 years age, while the average age of Japan was 49 yrs and China was 38.

It’s not the jugglery of numbers, for they could be totally misleading. The trillions of dollars of gross domestic product meant nothing if the same did not translate into wealth distribution among people by making their lives economically viable.

“We might look big in terms of economy by virtue of our sheer numbers. According to latest information, we are the most populous country — 1.40 billion people — in the world as we recently surpassed China in terms of population. Though we are fifth largest economy in the world. But, when it comes to per capita, we are the 147th in the world,” he said.

Telangana’s per capita was Rs.2.78 lakh a year, while that of India’s average was just about little more than half of it. Well-rounded growth strategy, besides taking care of the poor and underprivileged was achieved by the vision of KCR’s leadership, he said.

Subsidies could not be treated as freebies. That’s a balancing act of the society to ensure inclusive growth. The three iS Telangana believed in and practiced were innovation, infrastructure as inclusiveness. Innovation was not always about startups. Even government policies too could be innovative.

While applauding Telangana for creating 21 lakh employment KTR said, "Telangana has issued about 22,000 clearances for industries under TS-IPASS in the past 8.5 years, generating 21 lakh direct jobs".

KTR said that the world's leading MNCs, like Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, and Google, had chosen to establish their largest campus in Hyderabad.

Hyderabad was recognized as the world's vaccination capital. Telangana has successfully achieved many such milestones in a few years as a result of Chief Minister KCR's recognition of the underlying issues, followed by the timely and effective deployment of projects.